By Gaby Galvin U.S. News & World Report | September 3, 2019
According to new research, poor diet is the leading risk factor for deaths from lifestyle-related diseases in the majority of the world.
About 1 in 5 deaths globally is associated with poor diet, according to a new analysis published in the medical journal The Lancet.
Unhealthy diets – which contribute to health issues such as cardiovascular disease, forms of cancer and Type 2 diabetes – were associated with an estimated 11 million deaths in 2017, the report found. Tobacco, meanwhile, was linked to 8 million deaths and high blood pressure was associated with 10.4 million deaths, according to estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study, which tracked global dietary trends from 1990 to 2017.
“Poor diet is responsible for more deaths than any other risk factor in the world,” study author Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, said in a statement.
Among all 195 countries, Uzbekistan saw the highest rate of diet-related deaths – 892 deaths per 100,000 people – followed by Afghanistan and the Marshall Islands. Israel saw the lowest rate of diet-related deaths of any country, with just 89 deaths per 100,000. The U.S. ranked 43rd with a rate of 171 deaths per 100,000, while the United Kingdom ranked 23rd and India ranked 118th.
While specific dietary issues ranged across countries, diets that were low in whole grains and fruits and high in sodium accounted for more than half of diet-related deaths, the study found. Across all 15 dietary factors measured, not eating enough healthy food was associated with more deaths than eating too much unhealthy food.
The largest dietary gaps globally were foods like nuts and seeds, milk and whole grains, the study found. People generally drank too many sugary drinks and ate too much red and processed meat, trans fats and sodium.
“At the regional level, in 2017, the intake of all healthy foods was lower than the optimal level in all 21 … regions,”the study said, though some regions did appear to strike the right balance for a few dietary factors.
People in Central Asian countries, for example, ate the “optimal” amount of vegetables, while those in the Caribbean, tropical Latin America, South Asia, western sub-Saharan Africa and eastern sub-Saharan Africa ate the right amount of legumes.
The findings underscore “the need for comprehensive interventions to promote the production, distribution and consumption of healthy foods across all nations,” Murray said.
Researchers said those interventions should include global coordination to improve diets by collaborating with food systems, as well as food policies that consider the potential impact on climate change and environmental degradation.
“Poor diet is an equal opportunity killer,” Dr. Ashkan Afshin, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor at the University of Washington, said in a statement. “We are what we eat and risks affect people across a range of demographics, including age, gender and economic status.”